Description

The Lords of Midnight brings to life this epic land, as Doomdark's forces aim to wrest control of its 4000 screens. Your initial party of the task contains four fighters - Luxor the Moonprince, Morkin (his son), Corleth the Fey and Rothron the Wise, each of whom has their own characteristics. Many more lords can be recruited as the game progresses, with names such as Lord Dreams, Lord Blood and the Utarg of Utarg. If Luxor is killed, only Morkin remains under human control.

The game can be won in two ways - by overthrowing the full might of Doomdark's forces, or by stealing the moon ring back from its location (a task only Morkin can attempt), meaning that the game can be played as a straight strategy title or an RPG of sorts.

The land of Midnight includes lakes, keeps, plains and forests (the Fey are usually located here). You can always look in each of the 8 compass directions, meaning that the game features 32000 views - a remarkable tally in systems of this size.

Doomdark's forces, the Foul, move at night, giving the game a turn-based structure. Your characters can also die at the hands of dragons, skulkrin and wolves.

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Competition

Beyond ran a competition associated with the game: The first player to complete the game and send the printouts (the game allows to print pretty much every information) would see his campaign turned into a novel. However, they did not find a publisher to go through with that plan. An alternative plan was to turn it into a graphic novel by the staff of Crash! magazine, but that also did not work out. Mike Singleton remembered in an 2004 interview that the lucky winner was compensated with another prize. It is unknown if this ties in with the below "Crash!" trivia entry.

Crash!

The first person to complete the game was Robin Candy, who reviewed it for Crash! magazine. When they featured it on their covertape seven years later, he wrote the playing guide. This included basic gameplay and control details, as well as a vague, semi-prose guide to how he completed it.

Development

According to Singleton, there were only seven months between his first meeting with Beyond's Mike Pratt and the final master copy of the game.

Sound

Unusually the Commodore 64 version of the game did not have any sound.

Title

Singleton's first idea was to name the game Lords of Atlantis while he was still experimenting with the landscaping technology. However, he was convinced by Beyond to choose another name.

Awards

ACE (Advanced Computer Entertainment)

March 1991 (issue #42) - Included in the list Greatest Games of all Time in category Strategy Games (editorial staff choice)

Commodore Format

April 1991 (Issue 7) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)